Free Burial by Graham Masterton Page A

rested a Gila monster.
    E.C.Dude lifted the terrarium’s lid, reached inside, and took two $20s out from under the rocks. The Gila monster licked its lips, and its eye rolled up like a camera-shutter, but otherwise it ignored him.
    Stanley said, ‘Gila monsters are bad luck.’
    â€˜Oh, yes? What do you know about bad luck?’
    â€˜My mom says we always have bad luck.’
    â€˜Really? Well, that’s bad luck, always having bad luck.’
    â€˜Gila monsters have dead people’s souls inside them, and they won’t let them go.’
    E.C. Dude stepped out of the trailer, closed the door, and locked it. He looked this way and that, just to make sure that there was nobody lurking around the lot, and then he came down the steps.
    â€˜I’m going for a beer,’ he told Stanley. ‘How about you?’
    â€˜So long as you’re buying.’
    Hm, thought E.C. Dude. Those are the words of a kid who’s spent too long hanging around bars.
    They had walked only a few yards across the sun-cracked concrete when E.C. Dude heard that noise again. This time, it was much louder, much more dramatic. It sounded as if a whole car were being compressed in a crusher, panels collapsing, transmission shearing, windshield cracking.
    It was immediately followed by a high, rubbery-sounded chorus of protest from all around the lot. He turned this way and that, and as he turned, a bronze metallic Delta 88 that was parked right next to him began to buck on its suspension, and then suddenly start to slide sideways.
Sideways
, without anything visibly dragging it. Its tire-treads rumbled and squealed in an unholy, discordant quartet, and after six or seven feet its front bumper noisily collided with another sedan.
    E.C. Dude turned to Stanley in total amazement. ‘Can you see that? Look at it! Holy shit, it’s moving by itself!’
    But all Stanley could do was stand where he was, his eyes wide, terrified.
    Every car on the lot began bucking and dipping, and the shrieking of tires grew louder and louder. Their rooftops surged up and down like the backs of stampeding cattle. E.C. Dude ran to the bronze Delta 88 and tried to open the door, but the car abruptly tore away the front bumper assembly of the sedan next to it, and was pulled so forcefully away from him that he almost lost his fingers in the doorhandle.
    Pulled — but pulled by
what
?
    The whole collection of cars began to smash themselves into the back wall of the workshop, and into each other, in a huge unstoppable demolition derby. There was nothing that E.C. Dude could do but stand and watch them in horror and misery. Fenders ripped against fenders, doors were torn off by their hinges, steering-columns were forced through seats and windows. The cars were pulled toward the workshop wall with such irresistible force that they began to mount each other’s rooftops. E.C. Dude watched as one of their better bargains, a two-thousand dollar Regal, reared nose upward behind the trunk of an 88, and then rolled over on its back.
    The noise was ear-splitting. A hideous cacophony of grinding and crunching and warping metal, combined with the slate-pencil squeaking of laminated glass.
    Stanley clapped his hands over his ears. ‘What is it?’ he screamed. ‘What’s happening?’
    â€˜I don’t know!’ shouted E.C. Dude. ‘There’s nobody driving them — they’re just doing it themselves!’
    Two sedans reared up against each other like battling steers. With a long continuous screech of metal against metal, they pushed themselves higher and higher until theywere almost vertical. Then one of them fell over sideways, and rolled over and over down the struggling, jarring chaos of other cars.
    â€˜Jesus Christ,’ said E.C. Dude, in disbelief. ‘What the hell am I going to say to Papago Joe?’
    â€˜Look!’ said Stanley, pointing. ‘Look at the wall!’
    â€˜What are you